‘It Can’t Be Worse’: How Republican Women Are Trying to Rebuild

Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Alexandra Leigh Young and Eric Krupke, with help from Luke Vander Ploeg, and edited by Lisa Tobin and Marc Georges

Julie, what was the takeaway for the Republican Party after those midterm results? Well, the takeaway was a much broader recognition than there had been in the past that they really needed to figure out a better strategy for recruiting and supporting women to run for office in the Republican Party. There had been voices — Republican women who had been talking for a long time about the fact that this is a weak point for the party, this is something that they had to work on, this is something they had to build up to. Democrats were better at this than Republicans were. But after the midterms in 2018, it kind of hit everyone like a ton of bricks that this is not just something to work on, this is a crisis. So now you have people like Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the House —

And just seemed to not quite believe that Perry could be as conservative as she said she was. And it was fascinating to me, because as I talked to party strategists and people who have been watching this play out over many years, there is this sense that, within the Republican Party, particularly where conservatives are concerned, there’s a tendency to see women as inherently less conservative than men, even if they’re lifelong Republicans who talk in all of the same ways as male conservatives about all of the issues that voters care about, there’s just a tendency to be suspicious that maybe, because she’s a woman, she may not be quite as hard-line as I want her to be. And no question, Perry’s opponent has tried to use that to his advantage.

I think part of it is that people are not used to what they haven’t seen before. And the fact is that this whole problem exists because there have not been as many women in the ranks of the Republican Party as there have been in the ranks of the Democratic Party. The other reality is that some of the most prominent women in Congress are more toward the center. You have Susan Collins in Maine, Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. These are names that people know and associate with the Republican Party. And so given that, and that the crop of women who are leading this effort to recruit more women into the Republican Party, many of them are centrists as well, I think that tends to make voters a little suspicious that maybe this is just all an effort to move the party to the center, and not actually an effort to add gender diversity.

Well, right. And you’re not the only one. Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman from New York who has basically dedicated her political action arm to electing more women and recruiting more women, is supporting Perry. And I spoke with her for the story. And she basically said that Meadows and the Freedom Caucus are really walking this line of veering into sexist territory here. When you pigeonhole a woman and say she can’t be conservative just because she’s a woman, what does that really mean? And so after Perry finished knocking on doors, we went over to this lunch counter in a gas station, near the outskirts of town. And she was basically chatting up the lunchtime crowd. And it was a mostly male crowd of voters. So I kind of went around after she talked to some of these folks to see what kind of impression she had made. And I wasn’t recording at this point. I was just kind of going up to people and trying to get their thoughts. And I spoke to one man, his name was Tommy Moore, he was a retired barbecue restaurant owner. And he still seemed undecided, and I kind of asked him what was going to make the difference to him in terms of what his vote was going to be. And he said, you know, I want someone who’s going to support the president, I think she would do that. But the only thing is, that, as you know — he says to me — women can sometimes be a little emotional, and I’d really have to think about that. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, well, it’s just something I have to think about. He said it again. And he clearly liked Dr. Perry and what she stood for, but it was also apparent to me that he wasn’t necessarily going to be comfortable voting for her.

Well, I think there’s going to be a lot of soul-searching among the leaders of the party about what they can actually do to diversify on gender lines. They have outspent the forces supporting Greg Murphy a large factor. This is a pretty smooth-running campaign. They have a candidate who really fits the ideology of the district. And part of this effort is a gamble that, even if voters may not be ready to embrace a candidate like this, that with the concerted effort of party leaders, with enough money, with enough preparation, that they can turn that tide. If that turns out not to be the case, that voters simply don’t want to elect a person like this, then they’re going to have to re-evaluate and figure out what it’s going to take to change the game.

Source: The New York Times

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History of the United States Republican Party • Republican Party (United States) • Democratic Party (United States) • Republican Party (United States) • United States midterm election • Kevin McCarthy (California politician) • Party leaders of the United States House of Representatives • Rick Perry • Conservatism • Republican Party (United States) • Conservatism • Woman • Conservatism • Republican Party (United States) • Conservatism • She's a Woman • Republican Party (United States) • Democratic Party (United States) • Assemblywomen • Susan Collins • Maine • Lisa Murkowski • Alaska • History of the United States Republican Party • History of the United States Republican Party • Centrism • Centrism • Elise Stefanik • United States House of Representatives • New York • Rick Perry • Freedom Caucus • Sexism • Conservatism in the United States • She's a Woman • Lunch counter • Tommy Moore (musician) • What Do You Mean? • Gender • Greg Murphy • Ideology •